My take on the pro-whip antenna update

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Yesterday afternoon I put my home brew take on a pro-whip antenna back up under test I smartened thing up a little so the wire and things will not get in the way of Allison when she wants to use the rotary washing line the following snaps I took this morning. I wanted to check the propagation path on 40m during a couple of hours stopping at dinner time.

823354_10151328424677017_2011797128_oI was Hearing: DA4XIQ, DC2XX, DC9FD, DD7FM, DL1FX, GM8LYS, HB9DUK, HB9DVH, LB9YE, OZ7IT, PA4TJ, RW3ADB
And I was Heard by: DA4XIQ, DC2XX, DC9FD, DD6UBW, DD7FM, DF2LV, DK6UG, GM8LYS, HB9DUK, HB9DVH, LA1NRA, LA9JO, LB9YE, MM0BFF, OE3MWS, OH5ZA, OZ7IT, PA4TJ, PI4THT, RA9JB, RW3ADB.

 

My take on the pro-whip antenna

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P1040318The above snap show’s my take on a pro whip antenna – fishing rod vertical antenna 10m high and with four ground plane radials 10m long the black box is a ununs rated at 200 watt SSB made by Pro whip antennas. costing £15 the wire and insulators I brought from Henry Westlake. and the coax RG58 we brought from Martin Lynch & son’s. I brought the fishing pole from Sandpiper Aerial technology Aberdare South Wales a couple of years ago when I visited there trade stand at the West London Radio & Electronic show at kempton park for about £20.

P1040282After breakfast I assembled my home made version of a pro whip antenna The vertical wire is 10m long and the ground plane wire is 10m long I tied the fishing rod onto the washing line tuned up on 40m and worked GM100RSGB located up in Thurso my signal report was 5/9

wspr 20m

After lunch I thought I would check how well or not my home made fishing rod vertical antenna will work on 20m I chose to use WSPR pronounced whisper implements a protocol designed for probing potential radio propagation paths with low power each transmission carries the station’s callsign: Maidenhead locator: transmission power in dbm:

I would like to experiment further with this antenna it tunes easy on 40m with a external ATU I used the MFJ deluxe versa tunner II  model MFJ-948  However the atu inside the ft-950 tuned the antenna up when I changed to 20m.

 

VX-8G Adv. Dual Band Handheld Transceiver with Built-In GPS

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I have been reading with interest the developments that have been made in the area of Amateur radio and the use of APRS when Peter returned from Arran last year he started to experiment with the fox view series of aprs projects he brought the Foxdelta FoxTrak for around £14 plus postage Peter had a lot of fun with the above set up taking it out with him on his bike or when out helping at the club field day site. I was interested in doing some thing in the shack and I soon got interested in the Foxview2 The FOXVIEW was the first amateur radio project ever built for radio amateurs to view APRS packets without a PC or expensive APRS Enabled Radio Equipment. FoxView2 is called an APRS Terminal. Intended for Base Station use,

FoxView2 will do the following:

1. Its an LCD APRS Viewer with Filters.

2. A Tracker with GPS# 3. A GPS-less APRS Position encoder

4. A stand-alone (No PC) Digipeater

5. An advanced tracker with FD-OT+ tracker module*

6. A Kiss TNC and 1 Wire APRS WX Station*

The  FoxView2 has been running in the radio shack for a year mostly set up with Peter’s call sign however when is was away with the Cam-hams on the Scottish island of Mull Peter set it up to transmit my call sign – I had read in the radio press about the Yaesu VX-8G  I thought it might be fun using the radio when I am out and about in the Great out doors walking or on my bike. The Yaesu VX-8G/E (Europe) is a 5 watt GPS 2m/70cm Dual Band FM Handheld Transceiver has Wideband Receive (108-999MHz) with a built-in GPS antenna and Data Terminal, but, unlike his older brother the VX-8D, no Bluetooth® capability.The VX-8G is fully rugged and waterproof (IPX5) design, and is perfect for extreme sports and outdoor use. The VX-8 Series radios are compatible with the world wide standard APRS® (Automatic Packet Reporting System) using the GPS system to locate and exchange position information and more. I ordered one from ML&S and it arrived on Friday morning.

Peter set it up and he was the first to try it out on Sunday afternoon he cycled on the following route as recorded on aprs.fi 

I monitored Peter’s progress from the shack while he was in town we were able to speak to each other on 70cms only changing over to 2m after Peter got to the bottom of Boars Hill. while Peter was at the top of Boars hill I heard Peter on 145.400 in QSO with Mike M1ELK/M  who was parked on Bury down.